Beal did run into some environmental problems, but they could have been overcome. All he needed was a good environmental impact statement, which an appropriate contractor could have produced. The main difficulty was the lack of a government contract for the critical initial demonstration. NASA wanted its own designs, the EELV programs were highly subsidized and competing for the same market, and commercial customers would not pay for an untested rocket. And even the EELV programs are losing customers to the Russian manufactured Sealaunch. <br /><br />Beal correctly determined that a new US built launch vehicle could not succeed without a government contract. (And this is still true.) Although his design was interesting and innovative, engineering-wise this was not enough to compete with Delta IV, Atlas V, Airane, and Sealaunch, proton, Long March, etc.<br />